Orange
The orange is the world's leading tree fruit — a subtropical citrus that wants warmth without hard frost. It rings the frost-free subtropics: Brazil and Florida for juice, the Mediterranean for the table.
How it grows
Orange grows on a tree — the fruit ripens above the ground, up in the canopy.
What it’s worth to grow
Farm-gate value = the price farmers are paid per kilogram (FAOSTAT producer prices, median of 389 positive country-year observations spanning 2018–2024). It tracks how costly and labour-intensive a crop is to grow — almonds and vanilla command a premium; potatoes and cereals are cheap staples.
Where Earth's climate suits orange
Climatic suitability only — scored for every 0.5° of the planet from this crop's temperature and rainfall tolerances (FAO EcoCrop) on AgroClim 1991–2025 normals (AgERA5 temperature, CHIRPS/ERA5 rainfall). It shows where the rain-fed climate permits the crop, not where it is grown today; irrigation lets many crops thrive in drier country than the map suggests (California, Egypt, the Indus and Nile).
Who grows it — and where the climate merely allows it
The climate where it grows
— mean monthly temperature ▍ monthly rainfall — averaged over the actual growing areas (the suitable cells) inside each country, so it reflects where the crop is really grown, not the national average. AgroClim 1991–2025 normals. The 🌧 badge is the last 3 months’ rainfall as a percentage of the 1991–2020 CHIRPS normal (through 2025-12) — the current drought/deluge signal.
Climate envelope · FAO EcoCrop
Deep bar = optimal range; pale bar = absolute tolerance. Beyond the pale bar the crop fails. Latitude tolerance ±40° · soil pH 4–8.3.
Growing calendar & hazards
An evergreen perennial that flowers in spring and ripens its fruit over the following autumn and winter; in the subtropics fruit can hang on the tree for months.
- Frost. A hard freeze destroys the fruit and can kill the tree — the classic Florida citrus disaster.
- Drought. Fruit size and yield fall in dry years without irrigation.
- Greening (HLB). The bacterial disease huanglongbing has devastated citrus in Florida and beyond.